American anti-LGBT rights group the American Family Association has declared that there is no room for dialogue or finding a ‘middle ground’ with LGBT rights campaigners following the suspension of a deaf university diversity officer that US LGBT rights advocates already say they want reinstated.

Gallaudet University Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion Dr. Angela McCaskill was suspended from her role at the university, which specializes in educating students with hearing difficulties, after a co-worker noticed she had signed a petition against same-sex marriage in her home state of Maryland.

‘I want to inform the community that I have placed Dr. Angela McCaskill on paid administrative leave effective immediately,’ Gallaudet University President T. Alan Hurwitz said in a statement.

‘It recently came to my attention that Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as [the university's] Chief Diversity Officer.’

However campaigners for same-sex marriage in the state oppose the decision to suspend Dr. McCaskill.

‘We strongly disagree with the decision to put the chief diversity officer on leave and hope she is reinstated immediately,’ Marylanders for Marriage Equality campaign manager Josh Levin said in a statement released by the group.

‘Everyone is entitled to free speech and to their own opinion.’

However American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer said the incident showed that there was no room for co-existence between ‘the homosexual agenda’ and freedom of speech.

‘We in America are going to have to choose between the homosexual agenda and liberty, because we cannot have both,’ Fischer said on his US radio program.

‘We have to choose between the homosexual agenda and freedom. We have to choose between the homosexual agenda and the Constitution, because we cannot have both.

‘We cannot give an inch, we cannot give one centimeter, we cannot give one millimeter to the forces of homosexual activism. We cannot accommodate, we can’t compromise, we can’t find middle ground, they cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be compromised with, they cannot be dialogued with, they can only be defeated.’